A Brief History of Crap Cars
And the future of shade tree mechanics
Robert Farago founded The Truth About Cars. You can read more of his work at his Substack The Truth About Everything.
Pistonheads who know how to turn a wrench wax nostalgic about the “good old days.” Back when they could repair a Chevrolet Monte Carlo’s faulty wiring, power-steering pump failure, numerous fluid leaks and worn bushings, brake pads, piston rings and valve seals. Or any number of similar problems on any number of other cars with similar shortcomings.
Of which there were many. You might even say all of them. Because back in the day, cars were crap.
The Bad Old Days
Cars handled like barges, accelerated like snails, stopped like a run-on sentence, heated and cooled like a pup tent, emitted audio tinnier than Bush’s baked beans, boasted bigger blind spots than a Nautilus submarine and mangled or killed occupants in anything more impactful than a fender bender.
Cars rusted, broke down and fell apart – not necessarily in that order. Measured in months and not many miles, short-term reliability varied. Long-term reliability did not. If a car had 40k miles on the clock, time was running out.
Just so we’re clear…
It wasn’t until 1990 that Saab enthusiasts established the 100,000 Mile Club, where members shared triumphant odometer pics with their quirky kamrats and incredulous owners of… anything else.
That said, Saabists understeering their way through the Grunge era who reached this now-mundane milestone spent a lot of time in repair shop waiting rooms, or knew a guy who had a small garage and an extensive set of metric tools.
At the time, there weren’t a lot of American skuggan mekaniker (shade tree mechanics) wise in the lagtastic ways of turbo-charged four-cylinder engines. But there were a lot of shade tree mechanics.
Average Joes who could service and repair any domestic car or truck. Who did so because it was cheaper than subsidizing rapacious car dealers, a point of personal pride and, crucially, it had to be done. Regularly. Constantly.
For decades, high school shop class taught American boys (and some girls) how to work on rolling rust-buckets. Augmented by hands-on mechanical skills passed down from generation to generation.
Males in their millions possessed the fix-it skills American soldiers used to repair GM’s Sherman tanks on foreign soil, defeating enemies that relied on roving squads of specialist mechanics.
The Year That Changed All That
In 1976, the Honda Accord made its first journey from Sayama, Japan to Long Beach, California. It was the beginning of the end of crap cars.
The Accord accelerated respectably (zero to sixty in 10.6 seconds) and stopped predictably (front disc, rear drum brakes). Its MacPherson strut multi-link suspension provided a smooth ride and agile handling.
Drivers and passengers had plenty of room, excellent visibility and enough climate control to avoid hypothermia or heat prostration. The Accord’s unibody construction and lap belt ejection protection was little defense against serious impact with the lumbering leviathans passing as passenger cars but…
Arguably, the ‘76 Accord was America’s first dead-nuts reliable, durable, practical, fuel-efficient, comfortable, controllable and affordable mass-produced automobile. If not that, it was Honda’s harbinger of things to come.
The above description now applies to just about every car, SUV and truck sold. Sure, crapmobiles still ply the highways and byways in The Home of the Brave. But you don’t need to be brave to take a car – any car – on a cross-country cruise. No tools required.
The gas station garages falling to rack and ruin in small towns bypassed by interstate highways tell the tale: thanks to modern design, materials and electronics, chances are you’ll make it.
It’s the electronic part of the program that gets the [non-Pontiac] goat of wrench-savvy pistonheads. Some 30 to 50 percent of your average current-day car, truck or SUV’s functions are controlled electronically.
OBD-II scanner or not, increasingly complex and integrated automotive electronic systems have put remaining shade tree mechanics in the dark. Pretty much eliminating the need for new ones.
Talk about a viscous circle… The less mechanically-minded people working on cars, the less manufacturers give a shit about making their vehicles suitable for backyard repair.
And now…
Most cars are as reliable as a DeWalt DCF899B 20V MAX XR Brushless High Torque 1/2-Inch Impact Wrench. As durable as Le Creuset cast iron cookware.
Concerns about engines crapping out – and other major mechanical failures – are largely a thing of the past. “Car trouble” lives on the other side of the equation. Figuring out how to use the damn things.
The Latest Car Technology Is Starting to Drive People Nuts. The Wall Street Journal reports that gee-whiz automotive features are increasingly prone to malfunction. Sometimes, laughably so.
In January, Vincent Dufault-Bédard tried and failed to remotely start charging his 2024 Volkswagen ID.4 electric car using its phone app. The 36-year-old engineer in Montreal scurried out into the 15° night in shorts and flip-flops, thinking he would be back indoors quickly.
But the car doors wouldn’t open because their sensor-equipped handles were on the fritz in the cold. He ended up having to shimmy into his car through the trunk.
“Just give me a normal door handle,” said Dufault-Bédard.
If Mr. Dufault-Bédard had locked himself out of his house at 2am as well, maybe not so funny (assuming you don’t suffer from schadenfreude). Not to mention the possibility of his door unlatching itself at speed.
Blame VW and their ilk for ignoring The Fourth Law of Software Design: the maintainability of a system is inversely proportional to the complexity of its individual pieces.
Electronic doorhandles aren’t something you can fix with a wrench – unless you’re using it to smash a window. But it is a defect its manufacturer might be able to fix with a remote software update. Or not.
The Future is in the Past
The real problem with modern automotive electronics is a lot closer to home than VW’s software provider and less laughable too. I’m talking about the proliferation of electronically-controlled, sight-based driver interfaces.
Often actuated via touch-screen menus and, worse, sub-menus, the newfangled farrago of “premium features” is creating task overload.
You don’t have to be a NITSA or FFA crash investigator to know that too many car controls take too much time to identify and manipulate. Leading to decreased situational awareness. Leading to KSI (Killed and Seriously Injured).
Back to the Future
Kia, BMW (MINI) and yes, Volkswagen got the memo. They’re replacing touch screen commands with button-actuated instructions.
Not capacitive switches. Physical buttons with haptic feedback tapping into drivers’ proprioception, rather than cognitive processing. In other words, don’t look, press.
In general, new old-style buttons require wiring. Which, as the aforementioned Monte Carlo owner would have told you, can go seriously wrong. Causing issues in unrelated systems.
Relax. We’re not going back to the days when owners of vintage British sports cars cursed Lord Lucas (the Prince of Darkness). But we are headed for a day when cars use their Über electronics to do the driving for you.
Will The Vehicle of Tomorrow™ be self-repairing? Mechanically, no. Unless you consider a robot mechanic part of your car.
As for the future of shade tree mechanics, it’s right here, about to bitch and moan about cars with plastic engine covers. How great is that? Pretty great, I’d say. For the record.
"Concerns about engines crapping out – and other major mechanical failures – are largely a thing of the past"
With all due respect to Mr Farago, this is where he is 100% dead wrong. GM has over the past 20 years been hard at work proving to us just how badly they can ruin one of the best mainstream internal combustions ever made (the LS V8). They've now impressively consistently achieved sub-75k mile lifespans from a motor that at inception could knock down 300-500k rather easily.
Hyundai/Kias (with 4cyl engines) made in the last, oh, 15 years are best avoided for their propensity to blow up.
Ecoboost 4cyls.... avoid, Powershift fiasco. GM 2.4, 2.5, 3.6 oil consumption/chain stretch, 1.4T are auction poison. Honda had oil burning issues in their 3.5L VCM motors, oil dilution in the 1.5Ts. Toyota 3.5TT are knocking by 30k miles. Late model Pentastars are starting to earn a rep for headgasket failures at the used-car phase of life... etc.
You had me until this:
“But we are headed for a day when cars use their Über electronics to do the driving for you.”
Is that a foregone conclusion? Maybe my bias against “self driving” is coloring my opinion; but I don’t see it happening. The task is so complex that there will likely always be issues; and folks might be less accepting of those issues when there’s nobody at the controls. The Pandora’s box of liability should also have a chilling effect.